


i must admit, i can't explain

by itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualday)



Series: howlin' for you [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009 Dan Howell, 2019 Dan Howell, 2019 Phil Lester, Banter, M/M, Meeting Past Self, Multi, Swearing, Time Travel, will i ever learn to tag? no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 10:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmyusualday/pseuds/itsmyusualphannie
Summary: dan's past self returns. dan and phil do a pretty terrible job figuring out what's going on.“Are you real?” asked Dan.“Of course I am. You’re the ones that aren’t real.”“I’m real!” said Phil, offended.





	i must admit, i can't explain

**Author's Note:**

> uh...i was inspired? ...i have no excuse for this. title from howlin' for you by the black keys.
> 
> happy (late) birthday to mr rat daniel! if mr rat is reading this, please go away.
> 
> beta'ed by [max](https://emikochauhan.tumblr.com/)!

“How’s that going?” Phil asked Dan.

Dan scrubbed angrily at the pot in his hand. He paused and regarded it with a mixture of irritation and dismay. “It’s not,” he said and resumed scrubbing it. Their dinner had been delicious, certainly, but Dan regretted not washing the dishes immediately after cooking. He should’ve at least put water in the pot so the remains of the food didn’t stick to it.

Phil laughed sympathetically and patted Dan’s shoulder, notably not offering to help with it. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

“Good.” Dan scowled over his shoulder, attempting and failing to maintain his annoyed expression while Phil's stupid grin was aimed at him. “Leave me with this disgusting pan, you horrible excuse for a boyfriend.”

Phil pinched his ass and left the kitchen while Dan cursed at him. He returned to violently scraping at the pan, pouring a generous amount of soap over it and rubbing with more intensity. Aha! Something had flaked off. No, wait, that was part of the scrubber. “Goddamnit,” said Dan aloud. He dropped the pan into the sink and glared at it.

“Umm...Dan?” came Phil’s tremulous voice from the bedroom. “I mean. Dan!”

Dan shoved the pan under the tap and filled it with water, using Phil’s call as an excuse to give up on trying to clean it. He headed for the bedroom, wiping his damp and water-wrinkled hands on his shirt. “What?” he asked, pushing the door to the room all the way open.

“Uh,” said Phil, and pointed at the bed.

Beneath the covers, wrapped comfortably in Dan’s duvet, was another Dan. His straight, dark hair was the only thing that was actually visible peeking over the top of the blankets, but it was unmistakably him.

Dan looked down at himself, looked at the Howell from his dreams a few weeks ago, and back at himself. He pinched his arm. “Ow, fuck.”

“What’s happening,” said Phil. “Who is that. Is that you.” His questions sounded like statements. He sounded vaguely in shock and, if possible, looked even paler than usual.

Dan still didn’t believe this was real, so he reached out and pinched Phil too.

“Ouch!” said Phil. He rubbed his arm, pouting, but he didn’t look away from the apparently-sleeping form on the bed. “What was that for?”

“Hmm,” said Dan in reply. He stalked closer to the bed and slapped a hand on the duvet. “Howell!”

With a start, the blankets came alive. Legs kicked and flailed, arms windmilling, and finally, a face appeared, brown eyes wide with surprise and panic. “Hello? What? Who’s there?”

“Fuck,” said Dan appreciatively at his younger self’s idiocy. “Phil, am I dreaming?”

“Am _I_ dreaming?” Phil retorted, despite Dan's pinches to prove that they weren’t. “This doesn’t happen in real life.”

Though they hadn’t been helpful to calm the younger Dan’s surprise in the slightest, he had relaxed a little, but still scuttled back against the headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest. He eyed Dan with suspicious eyes. “Didn’t I dream you?”

“No, I dreamed you,” Dan corrected. “Or, I think I did. I thought I did. Are you real?”

“Of course I am. You’re the ones that aren’t real.”

“I’m real!” said Phil, offended.

Dan reached out and poked Howell in the cheek. He hadn't dried his hands completely and his touch left a cloudy drop of water trembling on Howell’s face just above where a dimple would appear. “He feels real,” he informed Phil.

Howell rubbed his cheek, wiping away the water drop and scowling at both of them. He squinted, either suspicious or confused.

“How did you get here?” Phil asked.

“Why are you in my bed?” added Dan.

“I dunno,” said Howell. “And it’s my bed.”

“It’s  _mine_ ,” Dan insisted. “You’re in our time period. It’s mine.”

“Just to clarify,” said Phil, remaining looking vaguely shell-shocked. “You’re Dan, right? From, like, years ago? And you've both...dreamed about each other before?”

“Er,” they both said at the same time and exchanged suspicious stares immediately afterward.

“I thought I’d dreamt him a few weeks ago, that night when you went to get groceries and I napped on the sofa,” Dan said.

“I thought _I_ dreamt him when I fell asleep on Phil’s bed instead of doing the laundry,” said Howell. Dan was wary of the slow smirk that was forming on Howell’s face. He knew with annoying clarity the plans that he himself made whenever he grinned like that.

“Also,” Howell added, confirming Dan's suspicions, “in my dream, we made out.”

Phil’s gaze flicked from Dan to Howell. “Did you make out with him in  _your_ dream?” he addressed to Dan.

“No!” said Dan heatedly, an automatic reaction to the accusative look in Phil’s eyes, then reluctantly, “...maybe. Kind of. Look, I’ve told you before what I’d do if I met a clone of myself. The entire internet knows. Fuck, then kill.”

“Hey!” protested Howell, presumably to the ‘kill’ part of that phrase.

Phil pointed a finger accusingly. “Dan, he’s not a clone. He’s you, I think, from the past or whatever. That’s like...incest.”

“Masturbation,” chorused Dan and Howell.

Phil’s face did a strange thing that Dan had seen it do very rarely. Dan did not like it. “Did you…?”

“No!” said Dan again. Then he felt his own face do a strange thing, which he liked even less. “Um. Sort of. But, like, closer to the ‘no’ than the ‘sort of.’”

“What the fuck,” said Phil.

“I was dreaming!” Dan added hastily. “I’m not responsible for my own actions in dreams.”

“Evidently,” said Phil, “you weren’t dreaming.”

Dan and Howell exchanged considering glances. In Dan's desire to appease Phil, they had apparently found something in common, besides literally being each other.

“Hmm,” said Howell. Dan was irritated with himself for noticing how indecently low Howell's shirt dipped, revealing pale, jutting collarbones and the faintest red mark where the Phil from his time had doubtlessly left a fading bite. “I’m fairly sure we were dreaming,” Howell mused. “Like, I woke up in my own time when Phil came in and then Dan was gone.”

“I woke up when Phil came in, too, and you’d disappeared,” Dan offered, “but I didn’t know I was asleep until then.”

Howell frowned at him. “Hey, you never apologized for slapping me.”

Dan frowned right back. Their comradery was lost. “Well, what did you expect me to do? What would _you_ do if you saw your past self walk around the sofa and stare at you?”

“Shit, I dunno,” Howell retorted, “seeing as I actually _did_ walk around a sofa and saw my future self staring up at me, and I _didn’t_ reach down to immediately slap him, I’d say I did pretty well.”

Dan crossed his arms across his chest and scoffed. “Well, I’m not apologizing to myself for slapping myself in a dream.”

“My brain hurts,” Phil announced to the room. Their heads turned toward him instantly.

“Do you need to lie down?” Howell asked at the same time Dan said, “You need to lie down.”

Phil pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyelids tightly together. He walked over the bed and threw himself down face-first, narrowly avoiding Howell’s drawn-up legs. He pressed his face into the duvet and lay there silently.

Howell reached out to pat him sympathetically. Dan glared at the familiar movement, hostile suddenly for no reason that he could identify.

“Want to have sex?” Howell offered.

“No!” snapped Dan.

“No!” Phil said at the same time, his voice muffled.

Howell sulked visibly, his shoulders slumping and mouth turning down at the corners. “Aww, why not? You always say sex helps with headaches unless it’s a migraine.”

“He’s not yours,” Dan bit out. “He’s  _mine_. You can have sex with your own Phil.”

Phil lifted his face from the duvet, frowning. “Dan, the possessive thing again,” he said, reprimanding. “But also, yeah. First of all, I’m more than ten years older than you. That’s creepy. Second of all, you’re jealous as hell.”

“I’m not jealous,” Dan blatantly lied.

“I don’t mind,” Howell assured him. “I’ve had sex with people ten years older than me, and I like you a lot better than them. And you’re literally Phil, so it’s not like I’m cheating.”

Phil turned a disbelieving stare on Dan, who found that entirely unfair, as he hadn’t been the one who’d said it. “Wait, you  _what?_ When? With whom?”

“What?” said Dan, almost a screech. “I did not! What the fuck, Howell?”

“Oh, yeah,” Howell said, disappointed. “I forgot you remember what I’ve done.”

“Because I’m  _you!_ We have the same fucking memories!”

“Oh, yeah,” said Howell again. Then he laughed. “Ha. Fucking memories. Literally.”

Dan glared at him.

“I want to erase this entire conversation,” Phil groaned, smashing his face back into the blankets. “I just wanted to get ready for bed and go to sleep.”

“I mean,” Howell said generously, eyeing Phil’s backside, “you still can. I don’t mind. You can change into your pyjamas anytime now, I won’t stop you.”

Dan resisted the urge to slap his own past self in his stupid tanned face. He caught Howell’s unashamed ogling of Phil’s ass and barked, “Stop staring at Phil! He’s not your version, he’s mine, and you won’t get him for another, like, nine or ten years.”

“Selfish,” scoffed Howell. He turned his gaze to Dan and looked him up and down, smirking. “Okay. I’ll stare at myself instead.”

Dan did  _not_ remember himself being this forward and...horny. He could never imagine propositioning his future self or a future Phil, no matter how old he was. It was horrifying.

He didn’t tell Howell to stop, though.

“I want to wake up,” Phil complained.

“We’ve already established that we’re not dreaming right now, though Howell and I might have been earlier,” Dan said. “That’s what the whole pinching and poking things were about.”

“You can feel things in a dream,” said Phil. “I think. Anyway, how do we _know_ you’re real?”

Howell looked annoyed, which Dan found as a relief from his previous flirty expression. “Gee, I dunno. How do I know  _you’re_ real? I can’t exactly prove my own existence.”

“I could break his hand,” Dan suggested maliciously. “Then it might affect me now. Like my hand would have a weird bend or something.”

Wide-eyed, Howell tucked his hands under his own ass.

“No,” said Phil firmly, even though he probably knew Dan hadn’t meant it. Dan grinned meanly at Howell, who scowled back at him. At least he’d stopped flirting. “Why are you calling him Howell?” Phil asked, randomly.

“That’s what I said!” Howell said.

“Because I’m older!” Dan said over him. Howell sulked again and Dan added, “Why, are you just calling us both Dan in your head or something?”

Phil didn’t look at either of them, but the posture of his entire body looked sheepish. “I mean, maybe. You _are_ both Dan.”

Dan was offended for reasons he couldn’t identify. “Yeah, but I’m _your_ Dan.”

“Technically,” Howell chimed in, unhelpfully, “we’re both his Dan. Just because we’re from a different time period doesn’t make that any different.”

Dan had experienced these urges to strangle himself before, but it had never been his own physical body separate from his current one. He settled for glowering at Howell and hoping his point was made clear.

Howell shoved his hands further under his ass. “Wanna make out?” he asked weakly.

“No.” Dan pointed an angry finger at him. “I will not make out with you again. No more tricking me into it. Never again.”

 

“What’s happening,” Phil said, ten minutes later. He looked so confused, and Dan felt a little sorry for him.

Not enough to detach his mouth from Howell’s neck, though.


End file.
